No Changes to Worker Classification for BEAD, Pennsylvania Says

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2026 – It appears Pennsylvania won’t need to change a state labor law in order to access hundreds of millions in federal broadband funding.

In February, the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said Pennsylvania would be required to classify fiber technicians separately from electric lineman before signing a grant agreement with the agency. The state is looking to spend $711 million on deployment projects under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, money that can’t go out the door until NTIA signs off.

“Pennsylvania is going to be required as a condition of its grant agreement with NTIA to revise its classification so that they accurately reflect the work being done,” NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said in February. “It’s going to promote broadband deployment in the state by lowering labor costs.”

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That agreement has since been signed. But a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania broadband office said in an email Tuesday that “no condition on prevailing wage worker classification was included in the executed agreement.”

NTIA did not respond to requests for comment. A telecom trade group in the state said it hadn’t seen the agreement and was holding off on commenting until it had.

Pennsylvania is led by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. He did not foreclose the idea of a presidential run when asked at an April event.

At issue is the state’s classification of fiber workers as electric linemen. Because the work can be very dangerous, electrical workers get paid more than is typical for fiber deployments. Labor costs make up the majority of fiber deployment spending.

That led ISPs to push the state to make a new classification to push down costs for projects funded by the BEAD program and other public initiatives. Verizon and the Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania, a trade group of ISPs in the state, had asked the state’s Prevailing Wage Appeals Board to take their side.

The board ruled in the state’s favor in September 2025, finding the secretary of labor had acted reasonably by keeping the classification in place. Verizon and BCAP appealed to a state court, but in March, one month after Roth had said the state would have to change its rule, the court ruled in favor of the labor secretary.

Last year, two state lawmakers, Rep. Tina Pickett and Sen. Gene Yaw , both Republicans, introduced bills that would make a new category of “teledata” employees that required lower pay for public projects. Neither piece of legislation has made it out of committee.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry Nancy Walker , the official whose decision Verizon and BCAP appealed, argued to state lawmakers in a March 3 budget hearing that the higher labor costs wouldn’t prevent BEAD projects from getting done. She was appointed by Shapiro and has served since 2023.

The state is planning to get fiber to 58 percent of its 130,000 BEAD locations, with the rest receiving mostly satellite or fixed wireless.

New York Affordable Broadband Act

NTIA has in some other cases found BEAD money to be an effective lever for influencing state policy. The agency has said ISPs that win BEAD money will have to be exempt from state laws capping broadband rates or instituting net neutrality rules.

California legislators abandoned a bill that would have capped broadband rates for low-income households after hearing that BEAD participants would have to be exempted from the law throughout their state footprint.

States have also slowed work on AI legislation amid concern it could disqualify them from BEAD “non-deployment” funds. That’s money not being used for deployment after Trump administration efforts to push spending down, nearly half the program’s budget. An executive order directed NTIA to produce a memo denying the money to states with “onerous” AI laws.

New York already has on the books a law that served as the blueprint for the stalled California bill, its Affordable Broadband Act. New York’s broadband office said in an email Friday that ISPs had not yet signed grant agreements with the state, and those agreements are where an exemption would be spelled out.

As to whether participants would ultimately be exempt, a spokesperson would only repeat Monday that “all internet service providers in New York must follow all applicable laws – including the ABA.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul , a Democrat, put out a statement last week touting both New York’s $540 million in BEAD deployment spending and the ABA. Her office’s release said BEAD “moves forward alongside” the ABA.

Smaller ISPs are exempt from the low-income price caps, but two of New York’s largest ISPs, Verizon and Charter, won BEAD funding. The other major provider in the state, Optimum did not.

California, which has a longstanding net neutrality law, is one of only two states that still has not received NTIA approval of its BEAD spending plan. The agency in March told the Commerce Department Office of Inspector General that it was aiming to approve all state plans by May.